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How are you all holding up during this time, the era of COVID-19?
Clearly these “shelter-in-place” orders are necessary, as hard as they can be to abide by. Health reporter Donald McNeil of the NY Times wrote over the weekend, “If it were possible to wave a magic wand and make all Americans freeze in place for 14 days while sitting six feet apart, epidemiologists say, the whole epidemic would sputter to a halt.” We are all beginning to feel a bit of cabin fever, not to mention worrying about the economic impacts. Putting that aside for a moment, how are you dealing with your life’s routine being disrupted?
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Daylight savings time is about to be upon us! I hear a variety of sentiments regarding this semi-annual change of our clocks, but most people dread it in some way at each end of the spectrum. In the Fall, it’s nice that we gain an hour of sleep (or at least, sleep-opportunity). However, setting the clocks back an hour means that we will have fewer daylight hours in the evening, and in much of the country, it heralds the onset of cold dreary weeks and months ahead. I realize we are extremely fortunate in San Diego to have some of the best weather in the world, but this is a real issue for much of the rest of the northern hemisphere! In the Spring, when we set the clocks one hour ahead, we know that better weather is coming, and that we will soon be able to enjoy some time outdoors in the evening with daylight to spare. However, this loss of one hour of sleep is something that impacts our energy, psyche, and health – possibly more than we even realize.  The end of the year is approaching. Everyone is caught up in preparations for the holidays. Not surprisingly, concerns of the pelvic floor may be taking a back seat at this time.  In a very appropriate arrangement of priorities, matters of bathroom habits, physical performance and sexuality are a few rungs down on the priority ladder when placed up against family, gifts, and food. What are the reasons behind, and the cost of delaying attention to pelvic health in this way?
The negative effects on your pelvic floor may be closer than you realize to the actual floor - you know, the one that you stand on.  Are you struggling with urinary incontinence and looking for the best ways to take care of your pelvic floor? Maybe you’ve already done tons of kegels, and feel that your pelvic floor must be plenty strong. Maybe you still have that nagging sense of weakness, heaviness or pressure, not to mention the urinary urgency, frequency, and bladder leaks when it is least convenient. Not that there is ever a convenient time for bladder leaks…
Well, you may not have realized that your choice of footwear can have a profound impact on your bladder control. Bladder keeping you up running to the restroom all night?
Are you desperate to get a few consecutive hours of sleep but your bladder hasn’t gotten the message that this is nighttime and not middle of the day? Why is it that your bladder becomes more active at night than during the day? There are many reasons for frequent nighttime bladder urges, and many of them have as much to do with a sleep problem, as a bladder or pelvic floor problem. Either way, we can help you sort it out and get quality sleep again. Millions of women - and men! - in the U.S. suffer daily with a bladder that holds them back. It may be a small (or not so small) leak of urine when you cough, sneeze, laugh, jump, or lift something heavy. Or maybe it’s the need to go so frequently that you avoid going certain places where a restroom won’t be conveniently available or you won’t know where it is. It may even mean losing precious sleep due to your bladder waking you up repeatedly during the night. For some people there is even discomfort or pain when the bladder is filling up. In any of these situations, life is no fun with a “weak bladder.”
 Summer is here, the kids are deep into their out-of-school mode, and it’s time for some good outdoors family time! If you plan to go hiking, or otherwise spend much time outdoors, you know not to set out for the day without at least 1 liter of water per person per 2 hours in the heat of the day. Does that sound like a lot of water to you?
May is pelvic pain awareness month, and pelvic pain is a topic I am asked about so frequently that it bears talking about from a variety of angles. So many women and men live day in and day out with pain in their pelvic region, buttocks, genitals, pubic area, tailbone, groin, bladder, genitals, rectum. It can get in the way of day to day activities like sitting, walking, sleeping, sexual activity, exercising, working, or child care. It can change your mood, your focus, your ability to engage with people you want to (or just need to) spend time with and pay attention to.  This is a question that I am asked so often, it deserves a good thorough answer in its own blog post. Yoga is an amazing way of calming your mind, exercising your body, and just having a great night's sleep. There are many great benefits to be enjoyed from practicing yoga. Unfortunately, there has also a lot of controversy that has come up around yoga in recent years. Some of the concerns well founded for some people. So I thought I would try and address some of the questions, dispel some of the myths, and let you know how you can get the most out of your yoga practice in the safest way.   It's is a term that you may hear about and may have read a lot about. If you have pain somewhere in “that area” that is hard to describe, you have probably already done some research online to try to figure out what is wrong. You may have even found some possible suggestions as to how to solve this problem. But how do you know whether what you have is Pelvic Pain?  When we say "pelvic pain", we’re talking about a number of different problems, with one term, so let’s break it down.
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Helping health-oriented people overcome pelvic health problems, and live the life you love!
Deborah S. CohenSpecialist Pelvic Health Physical TherapistCategories
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